


Scorched Earth

by SallyExactly



Category: Timeless (TV 2016)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-28
Updated: 2020-07-28
Packaged: 2021-03-05 21:07:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,695
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25561795
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SallyExactly/pseuds/SallyExactly
Summary: Flynn knows that all good things come to an end. What he doesn't know is how long he'll have with Lucy.
Relationships: Garcia Flynn/Lucy Preston
Comments: 11
Kudos: 63





	Scorched Earth

He woke with Lucy in his arms.

Not an uncommon occurrence since they’d started sleeping together, in both senses of the word. It was wonderful to wake in the quiet darkness with her snuggled warm against his chest, her soft skin pressed against his much more scarred body, knowing she was getting the rest she needed. Knowing she was, for once, safe.

It was wonderful... but he knew he was setting himself up for heartbreak.

This was two people taking comfort from each other, something that could only grow in the dark and the cold of a war. It was companionship— that had been clear from the beginning, from the way she’d first come to him, battered and aching and desperately needing consolation. It was a fun, pleasurable respite from the violence and the horror.

And it would end.

He didn’t depend on his memories of her journal, any more, for a roadmap to this timeline. But he knew how things had gone in _that_ timeline. It had been much the same then, two teammates taking solace in each others’ arms... and it had ended.

But in a way, the knowledge reassured him, that Lucy would one day, sooner rather than later, move on. Because Lucy deserved better than him. Lucy deserved the best. Always.

As for who journal Lucy had moved on _to_...

Well.

Lucy had an extraordinary gift for seeing people as they could be, at their best. So she didn’t seem to see how unwilling Wyatt was to do the necessary work to become that better version of himself. She didn’t see how comfortable he was, as he was now. Garcia saw it, because he’d seen it before. But Wyatt might nonetheless make Lucy happier than he himself could, which was all that mattered.

Garcia would do almost anything to be the man Lucy saw when she looked at him. But that chasm couldn’t be crossed.

Lucy stirred against him, her hair tickling his chest. She made a soft noise, settled down again... and then stiffened slightly. She reached down, found his hand in the dark, and slid her fingers through his. “You’re awake,” she murmured.

He didn’t bother asking how she’d known. “Mm-hmm.”

She freed her other hand, turned the bedside lamp on to its lowest setting, and rolled over, looking up at him. God, she was literally breathtaking, in a way that was so much more than skin deep. When this was over, he knew he would cherish every second of this, every quiet moment in the middle of the night, every kiss, and hoard the memories, no matter how painful they were.

“Everything okay?” Her voice was rough with sleep.

“Yes. Did I wake you?” She hadn’t had a nightmare; he would have noticed the shaking, the barely audible noises of pain and fear.

She shook her head.

“Can you sleep again?” She needed it.

“Maybe.” But she left the dim light on when she settled against his chest.

He looked down at her hair, and wrapped his arm around her waist as he knew she liked, and tried not to live the end before it arrived.

“Flynn?” she said a few moments later.

“Yes.”

She pulled back so she could make eye contact. “Sometimes when you think I’m not looking, you look... sad.”

He barely managed to recover his equanimity in an unsuspicious interval. “We’re at war, Lucy,” he pointed out.

She was not deflected. “Is... this...” she gestured between the two of them.

A long pause, and he dreaded the ending.

“Does it make you feel bad about... your family?”

_What?_ “What?” he echoed incredulously. Relief swept him, a reckoning averted: of all the conclusions she could have come to, it was  _that_ one?

Oh, God, how like her, how so like her, to interpret the evidence through the frame of her own assumed wrongdoing.

“No,” he said, because he wasn’t going to come out in the open, but he couldn’t let her think that, either, he _couldn’t_. “No, it’s... no.”

She propped herself up on one elbow, studying him carefully. He almost regretted his vehemence — his tacit admission that  there  _was_ a problem — because now  he had her undivided attention, and she was on the scent.

Almost. But not quite. She deserved that comfort.

“But it’s something,” she said, with quiet certainty.

Lucy Preston was a genius, with an incredible gift for empathy. He did not meet her eyes.

A long silence.

“Tell me, Flynn.” Her voice was low, but that tone of unconscious command would have been at home on the battlefield.

And he wanted to. He wanted to confess everything and beg her to stay. But he would not let her empathy, her sympathy, bind her to him longer than she wanted to stay.

“It’s nothing, Lucy,” he told her. “We should sleep.”

She _looked_ at him, eyebrow arched. “How is it that you haven’t gotten any better at lying to me since you stood in a conference room in 1954 and told me you didn’t want anything from me?”

Ah... He wracked his brain for some convincing lie that would satisfy her.

“Am I asking too much from you?”

How the hell did she weaponize her own uncertainty so effectively? He couldn’t let her think these things that she assumed far too easily. Damn Carol Preston, anyway.

“No, Lucy.” He tried to think straight, and come up with a way to end this that wouldn’t end _them_. He had faced down two-to-one odds more calmly than he was facing Lucy Preston right now. “The sex is... great,” he said, knowing at once that it was the wrong thing to say. “We’re both enjoying it, you’re not... taking... anything from me...”

He trailed off miserably at her silence.

“Is this just sex to you?” she asked quietly, after a horrible pause.

It was so much _not_ just sex to him that he only shook his head, once, his treacherous throat tightening. He didn’t trust himself to speak.

“But... you think it’s just sex to me.”

“I don’t know, Lucy. I didn’t—” He almost choked. “I didn’t assume.” _I didn’t presume_.

“What _do_ you think, Flynn?” She sounded puzzled, and exasperated. “What is going on?”

He had known this would end. But to have the end loom out of nowhere like this still felt unfair. Oh, he was naïve.

Hot wetness slipped down his face. “I think...” he began hoarsely. “I think you deserve everything.” He did not meet her eyes. He did not add,  _and I can’t give it to you._

The firm touch of her small, warm hand startled him, tilting his chin up. He didn’t resist, but stared somewhere in the vicinity of the tip of her nose.

Then her thumb brushing tears from his cheek startled him so much he met her gaze after all.

Her expression was searching, just like in that parlor in 1888— “You... love me,” she guessed, her tone maddeningly impossible to read. “Don’t you?”

The bottom fell out of his heart. He felt laid open and defenseless before her. But—

He knew her. He knew the courage it must have taken, to guess something like that. He would not leave her wondering, even if the answer was blazingly obvious. He would not do that to her. He _could_ not.

“Yes, Lucy,” he managed to choke out. “I do.” He held her gaze as defiantly as he had avoided it a moment ago.

“Is that really so terrible, Flynn?” Her voice was small.

He laughed incredulously. “ _Terrible_?”

“... well, you are in tears,” she pointed out, and brushed them from his cheek again, as if that little gesture didn’t threaten to undo him entirely.

He snorted. “You deserve the best, and that’s not me.”

“Deserve?” She shook her head, like she didn’t understand the concept. “No one deserves anyone, Flynn.”

“You’re dodging the point.”

She looked at him with disbelief. “You tried to dodge this entire conversation.”

“And you can see why,” he said, more bitingly than he intended. “So. Now you know. And we can go back to sleep. This isn’t new, Lucy. It doesn’t have to change anything.”

How far would he go to convince her of that? Would he end up begging?

Her disbelief only intensified. But then her expression cleared. He couldn’t tell what she was thinking, but all he wanted was the safety of darkness. He felt exposed in a way that had nothing to do with his pajamas at the end of the bed.

“I can’t love you,” she said.

He’d expected nothing else, but it still felt like a gut punch.

“Because everyone I love—”

Her voice broke.

She took a deep breath, drawing on the steel in her soul. “They leave,” she whispered. “So... I can’t love you. Because I can’t—”

He stared at her, confused. Her words didn’t make sense together.

“I can’t lose you,” she whispered. “Not _you_.”

God, was she really saying—

His mouth was dry. Everything that had happened had taught him... when you were dreaming, keep dreaming. Time enough to count the cost when you wake.

He searched her expression desperately. “Lucy.” He knew she would never toy with him.

“I can’t love you,” she repeated, with the air of someone who has made a hard decision. “But I do _want_ you. Around. With me. I—” She hesitated. “You make it better, Flynn. This is terrible, and you make it better.”

He understood what she was saying... and what she wasn’t. He _ached_ over the devastating lesson she’d taken from all the pain in her life. The most loving person he knew had decided the only way to get by was to lock her feelings away and pretend they didn’t exist.

What had this war done to her? What had he done to her?

Then those two parallel lines crept up her forehead, as if they were shouting, _Lucy’s self-doubt is here!_ “If— if you want that,” she added.

H e looked at her in disbelief. “I tell you I love you, and you question whether I want to be around you?”

“I just—” She dropped her gaze from his. “If— when you save Lorena and Iris, and you want to go back to them, I’ll... understand, of course, I never expected you would choose—” 

She cut herself off sharply, leaving him with a sudden desire to dangle Wyatt Logan upside down over something unpleasantly sharp until the blood rushing to his head turned him into a real, live adult instead of an ungrateful fool. But Wyatt wasn’t his priority right now. Lucy was.

How could she be so generous to others, and so miserly with herself? He couldn’t let her go on thinking like this. “Lucy,” he said gently. “Lorena... wouldn’t know me any more. And that’s the truth.”

He’d fight for Lorena and Iris until he saved them, or until there were no more chances. But if he ever did save them...

He pushed aside that regret for a more appropriate time. He had given Lorena and Iris up as lost to him long ago. He’d given up _everything_ as lost. He’d never dreamed that... one day, scorched earth, earth he had scorched, might sprout again.

But even a lava flow eventually gave way to the soft green of growth, didn’t it?

He focused on the miracle closer to hand. “This was never just sex to me, Lucy,” he said softly. “But I was willing to give you whatever you wanted.”

She leaned in. “I told you what I wanted, Flynn.”

He smiled ruefully. He’d walked into that one. “Lucy, are you sure?” he whispered.

She leaned forward and kissed him with such eloquent gentleness that he almost let himself be persuaded. “I’m surer than I’ve been about almost anything in my life. I want _you._ And if— if Rittenhouse tries to take you from me? I’ll burn them to the ground.”

His eyes prickled again.

“Is that clear?”

He nodded, too overwhelmed to trust himself with words. Instead, he touched her gently, carefully, giving in to all the tenderness he’d held back lest it be a burden to her. He pressed gentle little kisses to her wrists, and the shame of the times he’d handled her roughly by those same wrists burned, like acid, — but right now, this was about her own feelings. He nuzzled against the back of her neck, and drew soft circles across her back, and kissed her eyelids. In the morning, they would probably make love, but right now he wanted her to be absolutely certain what this was. It wasn’t just the sex. It never had been, even for a moment.

And her soft sighs, her gasps, that were more than arousal, made him think that... if his earth was scorched, hers was parched. He regretted all the time he’d spent holding back instead of openly loving her. Because now he knew she wanted that, from _him_ , and she deserved all the love anyone could give her. Even if it were only him.

He tasted salt on her face, and held her close and stroked her hair until her breathing became even again. She pulled back and looked at him, searching his face in the dim light. Then she leaned in and pressed her lips gently to his rib cage, to his heart, and he shuddered and swallowed.

“Don’t let me love you, Flynn.” Her voice was low and steely.

He wouldn’t make her promises he didn’t know he could keep. If he promised that she wouldn’t lose him even if she loved him, and then died, his promise would only hurt her worse. If he promised that he wouldn’t willingly leave her...

He wasn’t sure if her wounds and scars would let her believe him.

The only thing he could do was stay, and show with his actions what she wouldn’t trust in his words.

“I’ll be very unlovable, Lucy,” he promised her. “I’ll leave the toilet seat up. And I’ll, uh, snore.”

She snorted, and gave him an unimpressed look ruined by a soft smile. Then her reluctant amusement vanished. “Flynn?”

“Yes.”

She hesitated. “You understand, don’t you?”

He searched her expression. “Yes,” he said slowly. “I understand everything you’ve told me tonight, Lucy.” Then, because her eyes were wide, and scared— God, the _pain_ she’d been through, to make her this superstitious— he added, “I understand that you don’t love me. Not even a little. You’ve never even _thought_ of loving me.” He paused. “You probably don’t even _like_ me.”

Her eyes were wet even as she gave him her best _you’re hopeless_ smirk. Then, again, her smile faded, and he wanted— he wanted it to last. Not for his sake, but for hers. She deserved smiles with more longevity than soap bubbles.

“I’m sorry,” she said quietly. “I wish it were different.”

He shook his head. “You have nothing to apologize for, Lucy.”

“I wish I could give you what you deserve,” she whispered.

“If that’s _really_ what you want, I can always teach you to throw a proper punch.”

She pulled back and looked at him in disbelief. “You are ridiculous.”

He gave her his best shit-eating grin for the pleasure of seeing that _you’re hopeless, and I’m pretending I don’t like it,_ the-lady-doth-protest-too-much smile again.

She scooted closer to his ridiculous self. “I’m glad you told me.”  She looked up at him again, concerned, probably over his reaction to her response.

He smoothed her hair back from her face. When his fingertips brushed her scalp, she relaxed, so he drew little circles at her hairline for the sheer pleasure of her reaction. She snuggled against his chest and wrapped one arm possessively against his waist. He smiled, his heart both far lighter and far fuller than it had been when he’d woken up.

If Lucy _didn’t_ love him, that was one thing. But if she _wouldn’t_ love him because she thought that would fate him to die or vanish... that was quite another. He’d never been very good about obeying the whims of fate, anyway.

“So am I, Lucy,” he whispered into her hair. “So am I.”


End file.
